Al-Qadim: Over, Sideways, and Under

 

I praised this animation in my last entry, then forgot to actually include it.

        

In the last session, we learned that some malevolent force is freeing genies from their vows. My own family's genie, without authorization, destroyed the ship belonging to a rival family and kidnapped my betrothed, Princess Kara. When questioned, the genie intimated that my family ordered the attack, so the caliph had my mother, father, and sister (the only family members who can summon the genie) imprisoned in the capital city of Bandar al-Sa'adat. I don't know whether the caliph is part of the conspiracy, but he said some weird things, and something is clearly going on with him.

   

The sorcerer Farid al-Mutan suggested I seek out the Genie Lords to get to the bottom of this mystery, but to find them, I'll need to learn the name of the island they live on. I can supposedly get that information from a hermit in the library on Shibaz. Before going there, I decided to go to Bandar al-Sa'adat to spend some money at the bazaar and see if I could find a trainer. I've leveled up twice and apparently earned the right to learn "new combat moves," but I haven't had anyone to train me.

   

I rowed back to my ship without incident, healed myself at the orb, and ordered the captain to take us to the capital city. On the way, we were attacked by mini water elementals, but they didn't take much effort. Once on land, I accidentally hit "load" instead of "save" (the menu is very hard for me to interpret), and I had to do it all over again.

        

This is how you have to determine which command is selected. I'm sure that "Save Game" looks like a completely different color to you, but to me it just looks slightly darker.

        

Bandar al-Sa'adat covers its island, so there wasn't anything to find in the "wilderness." The guards challenged me as I entered the city, demanding to know my business. My protestations of nobility got me nowhere. The guards said I couldn't enter any restricted areas or private homes. This is probably the game's way of hand-waving why what is supposed to be a teeming capital is so small. The only area I could explore was a thin north-south street leading to the caliph's palace. There were buildings on both sides.

        

Ha. I'll bet it's not even programmed.

         

Encounters in the city:

    

• A "trade office and money changer." I could trade gems for gold or gold for gems, but I did neither for now. 

• I earned 200 experience points for giving 10 gold pieces to a beggar in an alley. 

• A building "for rent" had a note inside that the previous owner, a scribe, had been arrested for possessing forged seals. "Let this be a lesson to all who plot against the caliph." It was signed by Vizier Zummerand. I told you a couple of entries ago that this game felt a bit like Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire (1990); here we have a similar plot of a city ruler turning tyrannical.

      

At least this city's fountain isn't dried up.

        

• A supernatural emporium sold potions of healing (100), extra healing (200), invulnerability (800), and giant strength (500); oils of elemental invulnerability for each elemental type (150-300), Moonstone Shards with different spells ranging from "Water Blast" (400) to "Lightning" (2,200). He also sold me a Gilded Dove for 200 gold. I had the option to say, "No, that is robbery," but it didn't get me anywhere. Apparently, the detailed haggling mechanic in the tabletop game wasn't implemented in the computer version. Anyway, this shop seems to serve as a useful money sink.

• The Travelers' Rest Inn had a sign saying it was closed. A couple of people were hanging out inside, but they didn't have anything important to say to me.

     

This was a common sentiment.

       

• Ingrid's Shop of Wonders seemed promising, but all she would sell me was a slice of honeybread. I wonder if that's like a sweetcake.

• A street merchant was selling cakes, but the game wouldn't let me buy any. Ditto a rug merchant and a guy selling pots.

• Several private residences. 

• On the west side of town, I found not only a trainer, but the same trainer as the one I met in Zaratan, Zubakon. He explained that things are falling apart in Zaratan. I told him I was ready to learn a new combat move. We sparred for a while, but all that happened was I got a second "action circle," which apparently causes my sword swings to damage enemies to the left and right as well as in front of me. If I can get one more (there are only three slots), my swings will damage enemies in all directions. There's no actual "move" to learn.

• A "Gambling Club" offered a game called "Guess the Number," that old "high/low" guessing game that's perfectly solvable in seven guesses. This variant only gives you six, but that's enough to get it 63% of the time, and the game pays 3-to-1. That's a 1.89 gold piece return for each gold piece spent, and the game lets you bet up to 500 gold. The only thing that keeps this from breaking the economy entirely is that it takes time. The interface for adjusting your guess is particularly annoying.

     

This got old fast.

        

• A healing shop. It would be ridiculous to waste money there with free healing on my ship.

• A place called "Reptilian Desires" offered to sell me a "wise serpent" for 102 gems.

• A coal shop, but you need a house in the city to buy from it. 

       

There were numerous NPCs on the streets, most of whom either commented on how oppressive the caliph's rule is becoming or spit on me for being part of the Al-Hazrad family.

        

How does everyone know me?

       

Eventually, I wandered up the road to the caliph's palace, a large building with many rooms. In the grand hall, I met Grand Vizier Zummerand, whom I gave a lesson on agentive versus non-agentive language.

       

This would 100% be my response in real life.

        

The vizier told me I could see the caliph, but I'd have to wait until a gong sounded. So I explored the palace a bit and was treated rudely by multiple guards and other palace residents.

          

That's an awfully specific policy.

       

In one room, I found a floor pattern that could be just decoration, could be the solution to a maze.

   

This is like the wallpaper at a Holiday Inn.

     

Eventually, the gong sounded and I went to the caliph's throne room. I demanded my family's release, which got me nowhere ("Your audacity knows no bounds!"), so I asked if I could just visit them. Worried that I might conspiratorially pass or receive information from accused assassins, the caliph summoned the vizier, who cast a spell to detect if I was telling the truth. The caliph then asked if I knew of any information that would point to my family's guilt or innocence, and I honestly said no. (I know it's not going to go this way, but it would be an awesome plot twist if it turned out my family was responsible.) The caliph said I could visit my father but not my mother and sister.

      

Interesting leadership style.

        

I still had to bribe the guard with 75 gold pieces to get into the dungeon. It was curiously enormous, patrolled by both human guards and miniature copper automatons, another creature outlined in the "new monster descriptions" section of the game manual. (Are regular copper automatons part of D&D canon?) A guard escorted me to my father's cell, which looks fine graphically but is described in the game text as particularly squalid. I observed that my father was pale and frail, but a Potion of Extra Healing fixed him up (and got me 600 experience points). I really liked that. So often in RPGs, you encounter sick or injured NPCs and the game won't let you do anything despite a battery of spells, potions, and other items that routinely cure every affliction you have and bring you back from death's door.

          

My father is an understanding guy.

     

My father asked me to find my mother and sister, find out how they're faring, and report back to him. I pointed out that the caliph had ordered me not to visit them, and he asked if I had sworn an oath to that effect. I said no, so he suggested it wouldn't be a violation of my honor if I ignored the caliph's demands. I agreed with him, but there was a dialogue option to hold firm. I wish I had saved and tried it; I'm curious if that was an illusory role-playing option (e.g., my father would have just demanded that I obey him anyway) or a real one.

     

Hiding from a copper automaton.

       

I had to avoid guards and copper automatons as I explored the dungeon, but it wasn't hard (lots of alternate corridors and empty cells to duck into). There were a lot of NPCs in the cells, claiming that they were there for relatively minor offenses against the caliph, such as criticizing the new laws or spitting on the palace wall. Many complained they were ill and dying. It was very evocative. One prisoner who didn't protest his innocence was Shubakan, the forger, who freely admitted that he forged the vizier's seal for "some guy from the caliph's court." Interestingly, while searching the palace, I found a note in a drawer that said, "Do not forget to see Shubakan." I have no way of telling who the room belongs to, though.

    

One of the caliph's pathetic victims.

      

I found my sister talking to herself in the back of her dingy cell. She came to her senses long enough to upgrade my sling with a +1 sling shard. My mother was far to the east of the dungeon, in a better cell block. She was in good health and told me not to worry about her. I returned to my father, told him how things were going, and got a Ring of Protection +1. It went right onto my character sheet, not in my inventory.

     

Like so.

       

I had hoped my family members would have something to offer about the genie's curse, but my father just said the creature must have found some way to slip his bonds. I had to bribe a guard 100 gold pieces (good thing I had plenty!) to get out of the dungeon, and then I bribed the original guard 400 more to move my father to the dungeon's safest cell. I guess I have no way of verifying that he did so, but I got 1,000 experience points for the effort. 

    

Having nothing else to do in Bandar al-Sa'adat, I left the city, rowed back to my boat, and told the captain to set sail for Shibaz. We were attacked at sea by undead pirates; I had to board their boat to defeat them all. They left a treasure chest with 159 gold and 9 gems. The whole dynamic is silly given that I have infinite healing available on my ship.

    

Bringing the fight to the other ship.

        

Shibaz had a small wilderness area with the same type of creatures in the oasis back home. I was therefore able to gauge the differences in combat with my new sling and powers. To use the new swing, I had to hold down the ENTER key instead of just pressing it. It wasn't easy to master when I needed to strike multiple times in a row. On the positive side, the +1 on the Sling of Seeking seems to add a lot more power than you'd expect given that it's only +1 and not, say, x2.

    

The island had a large complex with indoor and outdoor areas. The outdoor areas had lots of air elementals (regular and miniature), giant boars, debbis (what I've been calling jackals), and those goddamned bees. There was a room in which I got attacked by furniture.

    

Furniture closes in on me. I don't even want to know what's happening in that top left relief.

      

I found a new enemy amidst some oil lamps on sticks: greater ghuls, which can go invisible in the middle of battle. They had me furiously paging through the manual to look up a description (I love these moments), and it turns out that you can still target them when they're invisible. That was the key to defeating them. 

      

They got me the first time, though.

       

I had to bypass a couple of statues, one of which wanted me to recite a pledge to "uphold and protect the wisdom of this place." There was a book that taught me the words, but unfortunately I found it after the statue. The statue gave me the correct oath, but one word at a time, for which I had to pay a gold piece per word. The other statue required me to contribute knowledge to the library, so I had to find a scroll with something valuable on it. I ended up finding three scrolls, but the statue rejected two of them.  

      

If a substance with a partially reflective surface is positioned so that its third index of refraction matches the wavelength coefficient . . . 

        

Beyond the statues was a chest that spoke to me when I opened it. It accused me of trying to steal its treasure, but I protested that I had planned to put treasure in. We negotiated a fee of 13 gems for a shard that it carried; the shard added +1 to my sword.

      

I promise you I no longer think that.

        

Around this time, a guy on a magic carpet started flying around the area. I finally caught up with him outside. He refused to take the mirror I had brought from Farid. When I asked him about the name of the Genie Lords' island, he said he'd go look it up in the library, and he took off.

   
When he didn't come back, I went looking for him. In a room where I'd found some kind of altar (with symbols similar to the floor in the caliph's palace), it was now slid aside, revealing stairs beneath.

     

Either there's a secret staircase in the caliph's palace or this symbology means something else.

       

I went down into a large cave maze, where I spent the next hour or so running around and solving puzzles. This game really likes its puzzle mazes. There were spikes to negotiate, levers to pull, flame elementals to kill, urns to smash, runes to step on, and bridges to cross. Some of the rooms had statues that rushed up to me (causing damage) when I got near them. There were a number of chests with gems, gold, and magic shards.

     

Pulling a stone block.

Solving a rune puzzle to pass through an archway.

Attacked by clingy statues.

          

The hermit was buzzing around on his carpet the whole time. He kept telling me things other than the answers to my questions, claiming that he was answering the question behind the question. But as I made my way forward, I discovered that the secret to reaching the library myself was to find a magic carpet and fly to its entrance. I finally found one, and I hoped I could take it for the rest of the game, like in Ultima, but it only works between floor runes.

     

He was in the backstory!

       

The library was another large maze full of giant rats, giant spiders, earth elementals, and ogrimas (like ogres). There was one battle with a group of thieves trying to loot the place. I reached Level 6 after some random fight. Chests had more gold, gems, shards, and a Ring of Protection +2.

       

An ogrima.

 

How did you even get here?

        

The hallways had about two dozen scrolls, each with a line or two of pithy wisdom, all useless, such as: "Those who need advice the most love it the least" and "Adversity is the straightest path to truth." Some of my favorites:

   

• "Indolence is the stepson of ambition" and "Admiration is the daughter of ignorance." A few more, and I could construct a family tree. 

• "Avoid fighting shirtless young men and you will live long."

• "The mind of the djinn is like a songbird—the words are sweet, but ultimately are about nothing."

• "Allegories are like the waterbags of desert wanderers. No one knows why, but this is so." 

        

I'm pretty sure this is a direct Jack Handey quote.

      

I found a chest called the "Casket of Worldly Cares," which asked me if I wanted to put the magic mirror in it. I did. The hermit later picked it up and started arguing with his own reflection. When I interrupted him, he said: "Why don't you sail on to Jaza'ir Jiza and leave us alone?" I thus got the name of the island of Genie Lords. Later, I found a scroll with the same information.

     

Either way, that's where I need to go next.

     

I got out of there and returned to my ship. I finished off this session with a quick trip to Bandar al-Sa'adat to train to the next level (I now have an attack that damages everyone around me), and then to Sorcerer's Isle to deliver the Gilded Dove to the pahari. In return, she told me that she had spoken to a marid genie who used her Crystal of Vision to determine that Kara is still alive, but "trapped behind a wall of blue energy and grows weaker every day." The marid also wrote words on a parchment that I should speak when I meet my "true enemy": JIZALA MIR'ZABIN. This is the second parchment I'm supposed to read to my nemesis. 

       

Next time, it's on to the island of the Genie Lords. I find the plot fun, the world-building solid, and the atmosphere just on the edge of immersive. I'm still not wild about the mechanics, but I wouldn't mind another 8-10 hours with this one. 

      

Time played: 12 hours 

   

****

   

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07/20/2026